Weekly Crypto News

09:26 06.04.2018

Bitcoin Foundation cofounder Jon Matonis: "To the people who say bitcoin's a bubble, I would say bitcoin is the pin that's going to pop the bubble. The bubble is the insane bond markets and the fake equity markets that are propped up by the central banks. Those are the bubbles."

Cryptocurrencies

There is no support for Bitcoin. The main cryptocurrency plunged to $6,580. The next psychological level is at $6,000.

Seoul plans to launch its own cryptocurrency. S-Coin can be used as a payment within urban social security programs for citizens. Moreover, city authorities are going to found a fund to support blockchain startups.

President and vice-president of the NEM Foundation stepped down but work in the company as consultants. According to an official source, the company does not have any problems, however, there are some doubts.

Verge was hacked. Hackers managed to mine $1 million of Verge tokens. A rollback by hardfork is not planned.

Litecoin Foundation announced a Litecoin summit in San-Francisco in September this year.

The Fed considers cryptocurrencies as highly volatile assets, however, does not see any threat to the economy. The Bank of Japan has the same opinion, the central bank does not see any reason for a cryptocurrency ban.

Regulation

Founders of the ICO Centra Tech (was promoted by a boxing legend Floyd Mayweather) were detained by US SEC decree and accused of fraud. The CTR token lost 67%.

South Korea’s police detained 4 top-managers of local cryptocurrency exchanges. They were accused of the embezzlement.

South Korea’s authorities obligated 12 cryptocurrency exchanges to re-negotiate user agreements with customers so that the latter get more rights. The main complaints are related to the withdrawal restrictions.

India’s authorities forbade banks to serve cryptocurrency operations. There is no total ban on cryptocurrencies, however, the possibility is high.

Google starts controlling mining through a browser. All extensions where scripts for mining are detected will be removed from the Chrome Web Store.

Cryptocurrencyexchanges

One more claim for more than $770 thousand against the cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck was filed. It is worth to say, that there already are some claims against the cryptocurrency exchange where traders require to pay damages that were caused by a ban on a money withdrawal. Let us recall, in February Coincheck deblocked a money withdrawal in yen and traders withdrew $372 in less than a day.

Australian cryptocurrency exchanges implemented mandatory identification of all users and notification of law enforcement officers about suspicious transactions.

The cryptocurrency exchange OKEx refused an accusation of the manipulation of prices in the bitcoin futures market. Let us remember that recently some cryptocurrency exchanges were accused on falsification of trade volumes.

A bitcoin exchange OKCoin Korea was opened in South Korea. OKCoin was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges for a long time. However, the Chinese policy made OKCoin close. After that, the OKCoin team launched an international cryptocurrency exchange OKEx.

The cryptocurrency market lost 59% of the market capitalization since January 2018. Losses of many altcoins surpassed 70%, bitcoin lost around 50%.

Blockchain

The founder of Telegram Pavel Durov reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on a gain of $850 million from 94 investors during the second round of a closed TON project’s ICO. The minimum investment was $1 million. According to talks, the company plans to hold the third round until the end of the year.

According to Bloomberg, Ripple company offered money to cryptocurrency exchanges Gemini ($1 million) and Coinbase ($100 million) for the listing of XRP. No comments from representatives.

According to IBM, capitalization of the blockchain market will reach $3,1 trillion by 2030. IBM has already fired 20K workers in 5 years because of the automation of labor. Blockchain makes people unemployed.

On Thursday, the major US currency rebounded from its unexpected dive following dismal economic data that sparked fears about the strength of the American economy and also backed the Fed’s intention to leave rates on hold in the nearer future…

On Tuesday, the euro tacked on because market participants waited for reports on inflation and growth in the euro zone, while the Japanese yen went down after Japan’s major bank told it would be more flexible in its huge stimulus program…

On Tuesday, the evergreen buck dived because the common currency bounced off and the UK pound managed to ascend to the day’s maximums reacting to reports that British Prime Minister Theresa May is going to take control of Brexit talks…